Wil Wheaton (CleverNickName of Slashdot) did a blog post years ago what's it like to be a voice actor in practice, see here (context is the strike a decade ago): https://wilwheaton.net/2015/09...

Both Google Family Link and Apple's equivalent allow you to drop any apps you want, including social media apps. So if you want a barebones phone, it's quite easy to achieve - and as a bonus, you can incrementally allow more stuff as kids grow.

I have an old voffee mug covered with 1970s computing aphorisms. One says, "If computers ever get too powerful, organize them into a committee. That will do them in.."

Yup, one stated reason for the RAT on documents I have seen is to extend the data collection by the FDRs by maintaining power to the sensors and canbuses.

That's how I read it. It should say it has no thrust.

A typical jet turbofan airframe has two engines that each have a generator shaft taking turbine energy and making electrical current. It then has a whole 'nother turbine engine used on the ground and in some other flight legs called the APU; this exhausts out the tail cone usually, and can start engines or provide extra hydraulic power if needed, but is slow to start just like the main engines.

For power loss emergencies, a small spring-loaded fan pops into action super fast, called a Ram Air Turbine or RAT. It can only make enough electrical power to reboot key systems like engine FADECs or avionics, often only on one electrical channel instead of all channels. It's only a turbine, not a thrust-producing fan. It's a pinwheel toy in comparison to the APU and even the APU cannot produce significant thrust.

Firing the entire board of vaccine science immunologists, and replacing them with pre-science miasma theory antivax stooges, for example.

I dont know if this is fixeable outside of massive automation

Why would that be a problem? Japan is one of the leaders in robotics. If they can build thousands of semi-autonomous drones on both sides of Ukraine war weekly, then shouldn't be a problem to create caretaker bots.

I basically keep listing of stuff I want to watch and what service it is on. For the obvious ones (Stranger Things S5, Andor's new season, Wednesday etc), it's of course obvious, but if I suddenly decide to check something out (recently: Star Trek Strange New Worlds), I just use justwatch.com to find what platform it is on.

Once there's enough stuff on one service and too little on the one I'm currently subscribed to, I just switch. Kid has also grown up enough that she doesn't demand Disney+.

I still hope they'd at some point get the equivalent of Spotify or Apple music or Tidal. Apart from very few exclusives, everyone is on all services, and musicians get their due depending on the number of plays. Why couldn't the streaming services just provide access to everything and pass the fees to producers depending on views? ...like, you know, Netflix used to!

I have sort of the same deal. I hate "exercise" without any real purpose than busy-work, but I still started swimming around 5 years go. I typically swim about 1 km three times a week. I chose swimming because at least you don't sweat while doing that (or rather, it goes directly to the pool) and you get to do different styles to alleviate some of the boredom.

Result: Weight has been exactly the same as before I started, around 100 kg. Bloodwork shows that cholesterol levels and other indicators are much better than 5 years ago, but absolutely zero effect on weight. Also tried changing my diet - several times. However, all "lighter" diets just results in hunger. I don't mind feeling hungry during the day, but can't go to sleep if stomach is growling for food - so also have tried the 16/8 variant where I only grab water for most of the day and maybe one cookie just to keep blood sugar up, and then eat just before bedtime - no dice. My supposedly ideal weight would be -20kg, and I've never been able to go below 95 for the past 30 years or so.

I *guess* some of that earlier fat has turned into muscle, but frankly, my dad belly still looks the same as ever before.

If a single book is 30 plus hours to read it'll never be a successful series.

To be fair, at least around 1/5 or even 1/3 of each book is
  - Recaps of stuff that happened as the storytelling pans towards PoV character.
  - Descriptions of scenery.
  - Slow as hell travel scenes

On TV, you can skip the recaps, scenery is implicit, and the travel montages can be made much faster.

I mean, story summaries are pretty much:

    - Book 1, works as an independent story, the three country boys and two gals are yanked onto the adventure, during which they learn a bunch of lore and at the end they have a bossfight
    - Book 2&3, the boss was just a sub-boss of the real Big Bad, need to grab a bunch of gear. Gals go to level up in wizard school, boys start hunting for that extra gear. Add a couple of prophecies into the mix.
    - Book 4-7: The main character does a bunch of level ups with Fremen (oh wait, Aiel) and defeats a few more bosses. A new group (Seachan) show up in force, while they have so far been only hinted at.
  - Book 8-11: Folks bounce around and nothing much happens, but getting a bunch of setup for the final battle.
  - Books 12-14: Payoff to the previous four books set-up. Plotlines finally getting tied up with massive battles everywhere.

(Yeah, personally at around book 9 I stopped for several years, but then when news got around that the series had finally finished, I got around to reading them. It was ok-ish in the end, but I'll probably not even try reading them again).

    Anyway, there's so much filler in the books that condensing those to around Book 1 = Season 1 and then 1 season for every 2-3 books is not *that* difficult if you just cull a bit of the plot kudzu.

What's the new test that AI is supposed to pass to be considered generally intelligent? Given that humans are defined as generally intelligent, it has to be a test that a below-average human would pass.

That's a rather philosophical question. Check out Chinese Room argument (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room). LLMs are essentially filling that role. So the big question is indeed do the LLMs actually "understand" Chinese.

The big thing as it comes to AGI is probably emergence. At some point we just note that yeah, it is now impossible to even try to understand what exactly went down when the AI agent did $THING, even if you have full visibility to all the internal states. Yeah, that's an "if you build it, they will come"-type argument, but seems to be the way things are going.

Union

Duh... I can't add. But the observation is still valid.

That would be interesting. Some of that is available in IRS filings for instance, in 2023:
Their expenses were $39,845,284, with

• 8.3% ($3,287,433) of that being Executive Compensation (not counting Baker's $6,223,660)
• 25.4% ($10,106,669) for Other Salaries and Wages

Of course a lot of the increasing expenses over the years related to Mitchell Baker's ever ballooning compensation. I guess we'll find out this year if the new CEO is sucking up as much of the budget. But that's over $10M just for executives and the questionable value that they provide... all of the rest of the employees add up to less total cost.

Seems the Danes are less susceptible to Silly Valley's influences, or the study period ended too early, or both. Alternate explanation, companies have fallen over themselves to lay off staff but won't cop to AI as a cause, as they find other excuses to tell their investors.